


The End of the Affair

by Steerpike13713



Series: Exiles Together [5]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Break Up, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Occupation of Bajor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 12:35:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10831398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steerpike13713/pseuds/Steerpike13713
Summary: Garak and Julian, at the end of the Occupation.





	The End of the Affair

The end was coming. The whole station knew it, even Julian, whose grasp of Cardassian politics was still quite basic even after three years under the Occupation. He had not made plans for where he would go next. There didn’t seem to be much point. This devil’s bargain with Gul Dukat kept him chained to Terok Nor, and…honestly, whatever death he got, at Dukat’s hands or when the increasingly inevitable Bajoran victory came, it would be cleaner by far than the fate he had fled back on Earth.

That day, he had been able to attend to perhaps a dozen Bajoran labourers out of the ore refinery. There had been far more than a dozen injuries, but between his other duties and Dukat calling Julian to him once again to remind him of the need not to waste Cardassian resources that had been scarce three weeks ago and were now almost at breaking point he had hardly had time to treat that dozen, and pass on advice for what to do for anyone else those twelve and their families might know. Dukat had blustered, and Julian had wound words around to minor misdemeanours, and the threat of unrest, and how, really, he relied on the Gul’s _generosity_ to provide even this paltry portion of aid. Six cases of heat exhaustion, one old man whose heart was giving out exacerbated by the labour, four more of heavy metal poisoning and a woman younger than Julian himself who had lost her leg in a mining accident. It had been her and the old man that Dukat had objected to – the Cardassians would get no more out of them. And Julian had smiled, and called the Gul _generous_ , and tried to find some way that they would not be quietly shot, incinerated, and their bodies dumped out the airlock. He had said it would be an even greater waste of resources to dispose of them now, after all that work. He had said ‘there are other jobs’. He didn’t know if it would work. You never could tell, with Dukat. Sometimes, more often in the beginning, Julian had spoken too forcefully, made his distaste too clear, and Dukat had taken offence. Julian had never forgotten the stench rising up from the burnt bodies, the way they had been left to drop like rubbish, or dragged off by the feet to the incinerators. He never would forget the way the Bajorans had looked at him, standing there at Dukat’s shoulder wide-eyed and still desperately mouthing excuses, rationalisations, anything at all, as if any of that would have stopped Dukat once he had made his mind up. Still, on bad nights, he found himself replaying those deaths over and over inside his head, trying to find some way, something he could have done that could have prevented them.

Whether he lived or died, after all that, seemed a matter of only secondary concern.

And, on top of all that, he was having far more trouble than usual getting his head around the battered volume of poems – an actual _book_ , neatly bound in scaly brown leather – that Garak had left conspicuously on Julian’s bedroom table after his last visit. At least, he assumed the book had been from Garak, who had been gone when Julian woke up, without leaving so much as a note to explain where he was going. Julian was used to that. Not asking questions was almost a necessary skill for survival, out here, and he’d had to learn it faster than most. He’d ended up just flipping through it, his mind only half on the words, and eventually putting it aside altogether in favour of one of the few human novels he’d been able to bring out of Federation space with him. It was, technically, daytime now on the planet below, the station all but silent, but even though Julian was almost aching with exhaustion, still his mind wouldn’t let him sleep.

Tomorrow, there would be more injuries, more restrictions on how many he could treat and how well he could treat them, more of Dukat’s demands, more of it all. Terok Nor was not a place where one often heard screams in the night, but Julian’s ears were ringing with them, and no amount of pulling the round, Cardassian-style pillow over his ear would drown it out. This was what he was a part of. He saw it in the eyes of every Bajoran he treated, the fear and the hatred and the seething resentment there all the harder for being entirely deserved. He wanted, more than anything, to go to Quark’s, find a drink and keep drinking until his mind was quiet, but he couldn’t. If there was a reason he was still alive when so many others in his position would have been dead by now, it was that he was brilliant, and he was discreet. Turning up to his shift hungover would do nothing for that, and he was already on thin ice. Besides, after that first awful year on the station, news had gotten around and Dukat had placed an unofficial ban on Quark providing Julian with anything stronger than rokassa juice on pain of the Gul’s _extreme_ displeasure. Even Quark couldn’t miss a hint that broad.

He was just starting to wonder if maybe, if he lay still in the dark for long enough, he might fall asleep regardless of the tumult in his head, when the door buzzer chimed. Julian’s heart skipped a beat. Garak was standing there when he let the door slide open, looking wan and exhausted and rumpled from travel, but smiling and apparently uninjured and _there_ for the first time in – it had to have been almost a month now, and Julian couldn’t help the warmth that spread through him at the sight.

“Garak.”

“Doctor. May I come in?”

“Oh- of course.”

The moment the door slid closed behind him, Garak was in Julian’s arms, warm and wonderfully solid and _alive_. Julian had worried – he always did, no matter Garak’s sly suggestions that, _really, Doctor, a courier officer’s life is hardly so very dangerous as all that_. Courier officer, indeed – Julian could smell the explosives on Garak’s clothing still, and the way Garak hissed when Julian’s arms tightened around his middle spoke of bruised or broken ribs there that needed seeing to.

“Where are you hurt?” he said into Garak’s shoulder, and felt more than saw Garak shake his head in reply.

“Just a little bruising, Doctor – hardly worth your attention, really...”

“None of that. Where is it?” Julian pulled away, pressing the catch on the underside of his bed that would reveal the hidden compartment where his medical bag was kept. One benefit of his work for Dukat, he’d been in the habit of keeping at least some basic medical equipment in his quarters long before Garak had come into his life. Garak was already undoing his tunic when he turned around, to reveal dark bruising and slight cracks in the scales of his sides,

“Transverse ribs?” Julian asked, and Garak nodded, still watching him. “I suppose if I asked…”

“Really, Doctor, I have nothing to hide. Gul Toran wasn’t best-pleased with the news from Cardassia, and apparently decided that shooting – well, kicking, to be precise – the messenger would somehow force better news to materialise.”

Julian raised his eyebrows, “It seems to be a common delusion – hold still.” The ribs were only cracked, as it turned out, but that wasn’t much reassurance. Julian tried not to think of what Garak must have been doing, wherever it was he had been. It was harder, now, when he could recognise the chemical scent that clung to Garak’s clothes, the red-brown of Bajoran mud spattered on his boots. It had been easier in the beginning, when Julian really could convince himself that Garak was just a courier officer, and Gul Dukat’s fear not of him but of Garak’s mysterious patron, the man whose dispatches he had carried. That illusion hadn’t lasted long past their second meeting, but still Garak came to him, and still Julian let him in. A courier officer could, at least, be said to be no more guilty than Julian himself – less so, probably, because Julian was in far, far too deep to claim his hands were clean – but a member of the Obsidian Order? Of Cardassia’s shadowy, ever-present secret police? The man Julian had been before he fled Earth would never have considered it.

“There,” he said, drawing away, “How does it feel?”

“Quite healed,” Garak said, with another of those quick, bright, slightly false smiles. “Really, Doctor, if you fuss like this over all your patients...”

Julian kissed him then, abruptly, to quiet him, because if he thought of his other patients now he’d drive himself mad with guilt. It was, he knew, already the worst kind of hypocrisy to say he had come here to treat Bajorans where he could, to make things just the least bit better, while working for Gul Dukat and sleeping with Garak. If he still had even half the ethics he pretended to, he would have ended this arrangement as soon as he knew the truth. But, somehow, he’d kept seeing Garak because…he couldn’t seem to stop. Whenever they were apart, Julian’s mind whirled with all the reasons why this was, ethically and professionally and personally and in every imaginable way the worst idea he could possibly have had. But the moment Garak arrived at his door, suddenly all of that seemed distant, surmountable, hardly worth thinking of at all. He could feel himself spinning out rationalisations even now, and something in his chest writhed and twisted at the thought.

Garak kissed back, slow and sensuous and cool as well-water, one scaled hand running up Julian’s neck to tangle in his hair before he pulled away.

“I can’t, I’ve got to be up in five hours, my shift-”

Garak nodded, releasing his grip slightly. “May I stay here, then?” he asked. “Just to sleep?”

“Of- of course. If you want to, I mean. You haven’t asked before-” Julian cut himself off and smiled. The worst thing was, he didn’t need to force it. “Don’t pay any attention, I’m tired and babbling and _awful_ company right now.”

“Never that, Doctor,” Garak assured him, tugging Julian forward into another long kiss. Julian allowed it, gave himself up to it, let thought slip away with an awful feeling of relief. Who were they hurting, after all, the two of them? Of all Julian’s crimes, this had to be the least of them, and of all Garak’s as well. He pressed closer, revelling in the feeling of cool scales against his skin in the sweltering dark, and did not object as Garak’s hands went to the catches of his uniform, stripping every hated piece of it away, until they were lying comfortably entangled in Julian’s narrow bed, Garak’s hand still carding idly through Julian’s hair.

“When do you leave?” Julian murmured against Garak’s shoulder, already on the edge of sleep.

“First thing this evening. I’m expected back on Cardassia by midnight.”

Julian made a sleepy noise of acknowledgement, and let himself drift, glad that Garak hadn’t pressed the matter. As much as he would’ve enjoyed one of their usual arguments, if he’d been asked to participate in one just then he’d have never found a way to follow the flow of it, the back-and-forth and the sudden reversals that characterised all their conversations. This wasn’t something they did, just lying together, both awake, but quiet, just waiting for sleep. Normally, by the time matters got this far, they would pick up the thread of the argument again, and keep at it until they reached a point where they could argue no further.

He woke again in what ought to have been the fading light of late afternoon to the feeling of Garak’s eyes on him. In the semi-darkness, he could see Garak was already mostly dressed, sitting on the side of the bed and missing only his boots.

“What is it?” he asked, still sleepily, reaching out to check the chronometer – his first guess of ‘late afternoon’ was right, the station shouldn’t even begin to wake up for another hour yet – and blinking the sleep out of his eyes.

Garak was still for a few long moments, and then said, apparently apropos of nothing. “The Occupation will be over soon.”

Julian snorted, pushing himself up on his hands. “Do you really think that’s news?”

“Sooner than anyone thinks. Within the month, perhaps. Gul Dukat intends to suppress the information – he fears it may cause a panic. Surely, Doctor, his recent fits of temper have not escaped your notice.”

“I don’t think anyone could have missed that,” Julian said dryly, but the news had shaken him. Within the month. It didn’t matter, he told himself. He had been resigned, before, to what would happen to him. That it was a little sooner than he had thought could make no difference.

“I could get you away from here,” Garak said quickly, the words almost falling over each other in their haste to get out. “To Cardassia – or one of the colonies. Anywhere in Cardassian space. Dukat would never find you, you’d be free to practice medicine anywhere you liked. And if citizenship were to become an issue, there are ways. I could call in some favours, if you don’t want to be bound to me. Or…if you do, that would be enough. Just say the word.”

Julian froze. His heart was hammering now, far too loud in his ears. For a moment, he almost couldn’t grasp it. “Your superiors-”

“Let me worry about them.” Garak’s hand slipped over, catching Julian’s and holding it so tightly it hurt. “Julian. _Please_.”

They had not used first names, before. Julian did not even know what Garak’s was – somehow, it had never seemed relevant. Theirs was not the sort of arrangement which required such things. For a moment, Julian could almost see it – the promise of a life away from the screaming in his ears at night, with no Dukat, no endless, hopeless rounds that never seemed to make anything better, no half-suppressed terror that this might be the day the Gul decided Julian’s silence was no longer worth his life. He could _leave_ , could get off this station the way he’d dreamt of practically since the day he arrived-

And he would be leaving behind him a station full of enslaved Bajorans with no other access to medical care. He would be leaving Odo, whose position on Terok Nor was almost as precarious as Julian’s own. He would be leaving Tora Naprem, alone and desperate and making the compromises she needed to survive, and little Ziyal, all of thirteen now and too bright to be kept penned up forever. What would happen to them if he were to leave now? He had already suspected he would not last long past the end of Dukat’s use for him, but if he were free and on Cardassia? Who would say Dukat wouldn’t remove the evidence the only way he could? Oh, he claimed to love Naprem, he claimed to love Ziyal, but would that be enough? Like rats abandoning a sinking ship, Julian thought, and knew his decision was made.

“I can’t,” he said. “Don’t you see I can’t? If there’s _anything_ I can do here to- to mitigate things, even slightly-”

“Oh, _please_ , Doctor,” Garak’s voice was abruptly harsh. “Haven’t you been here long enough to know _that_ is hopeless?”

Julian shrugged. Hope, at this point, was so far down his list of priorities it hardly made the third page.

“They’ll kill you,” Garak said, leaning over him, “If not Dukat, then the Bajorans when they retake this station – and they _will_ retake it. It’s too close to their borders, and cannot be easily moved. Either they will take the station or Dukat will have it destroyed, and either way _they will kill you_.”

“Probably they will,” Julian said indifferently. “You’re going to have to try harder than that.”

He had been living under the threat of death – or worse than death – from the moment his augmentations had been discovered. He had almost grown used to the fear of it gnawing at the heart of him like a worm in an apple, hollowing him out. Maybe two years ago, he might have reacted more strongly. Four, and he certainly would. Now? He had made enough terrible choices already, in a desperate attempt to stretch out his life by a few more days, a few more weeks, a few more months, a few more years. And, every time, those choices grew harder and harder to live with. How many more such choices did he have left in him?

“Have you understood _nothing_ I’ve said?” Garak demanded, abandoning his other boot to round on Julian. “Whatever illusions you might have about your services to the _poor_ , _defenceless_ Bajorans on this station being enough to spare your life, I suggest you abandon them before they cost you more than you know. You haven’t set foot on Bajor in – how long, Doctor? Two years? Three?”

It had been just over two months, in point of fact – Ziyal had come down with a particularly nasty viral infection and Naprem had been positively frantic – but Julian could hardly say that aloud, even if he suspected Garak already knew. This arrangement only worked so long as they both ignored half the secrets that could be used to destroy each other, and there were so, so very many of those. Besides, Tora Naprem’s secluded villa hardly felt like Bajor at all – it seemed to exist in its own little world, away from the war that raged across the rest of the planet. He’d hardly believed his eyes, the first time he’d seen the place, before he knew what it was, and the price Naprem had paid for it.

“It’s chaos down there,” Garak said in a low voice, “I’ve seen it – they were stringing up collaborators in the street in Tozhat province last night. Cardassian forces are regrouping, but with Gul Toran in charge of the operation I have my doubts as to its success. It’s only a matter of time before we’re overrun now.”

Julian raised his eyebrows “Should you really be telling me this? What if I were to pass the information on, cause that panic Dukat’s afraid of?”

Garak stopped still, and started tugging on his other boot so as not to look at Julian’s face. “I probably shouldn’t,” he admitted. “Are you going to inform on me, doctor?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Julian said, half a snort, “But whatever they were doing in Tozhat province, _here_ , I have patients who need me. That’s all that matters.”

“Wrong again,” Garak said sharply, “They’ll turn on you the instant Dukat is gone, if he hasn’t killed you himself by then, and he _knows_ what I will do to him if he does. I’m higher up in the service than you suspect, my dear doctor, and even if I weren’t…charges against _Dukat_ would not be so very difficult to arrange for. If it’s fear of him that drives you, I could wipe it out in an instant.”

“No!” Julian nearly flinched away, “No. If Dukat is going to end up dead…well, I can’t say I’d be sorry, but I’m not going to- not going to let you _kill_ people over me!”

“I kill people for other reasons,” Garak snapped back, “All the time. And you’ve never objected to that, have you? Or is this more Federation sentiment? You can’t have become _attached_ , can you – didn’t you say yourself Dukat was a worm?”

“I didn’t know that for sure,” Julian said. It was a lie – they both knew it. “You told me you were a courier officer.”

“And you never believed me for a moment,” Garak nearly snarled, “Don’t play the naïf with me, doctor, we both know you’re far from that anymore. What would one more kill be, if it led to such an end?”

“One more death on my conscience,” Julian retorted, “Garak – I can’t take much more of this! And it is _my_ conscience it would be on.”

He was, sometimes, not sure that Garak _had_ a conscience, even. That as another of the thoughts that tended to come on the nights Julian spent alone, in the days immediately following Garak’s visits, when the high of his company had begun to fade away.

“ _All_ deaths are on your conscience, doctor,” Garak said waspishly, “How many times have I come to find you still caught up in some Bajoran or other whose death you had nothing to do with except that it was on this station and under your eyes, and so you felt responsible.”

“I’m part of this. That makes me responsible,” Julian muttered, and looked away. “I’m not going, Garak. You can’t persuade me, and if you try to force me-”

“Try! Doctor, if I had the least thought that you wouldn’t just come straight back here to die, I’d already have the hypospray at your throat.”

“That’s right,” Julian said, with vicious satisfaction. “You could keep me penned up, keep me prisoner wherever it is you mean to take me, but-”

“Such faith in me you have!” Garak straightened up, and Julian was abruptly aware of how tall he was. There was just one inch between them, and that on Julian’s side, but somehow Garak seemed shorter, less substantial when he was playing ‘plain and simple courier’ than he did now, standing over the bed and dressed in…it was not quite a standard uniform, more streamlined, less armoured, but black as pitch and quite unadorned but for the symbol of the Cardassian Union over the heart. Strange, how dangerous a courier’s jumpsuit could look, coupled with the unholy gleam in Garak’s eyes just then. “If I’d wanted to keep you prisoner, I could’ve taken you away from Terok Nor any time I chose, and no-one would have gainsaid it. If I’d wanted to reduce you to that, you would already be there.”

“I didn’t mean-”

“You are not, Doctor, in the habit of saying things you do not mean.” There was an odd sort of tension now in the set of Garak’s shoulders as he turned away.

Julian snorted. “Of course I am – you don’t think I lasted eight years in the heart of the Federation without learning to lie, do you? For that matter, do you think I’d have survived the first year on this station if I hadn’t known what Dukat wanted to hear?”

“That is not-” Garak glared at him, “You are wilfully misunderstanding me, doctor.”

“So are you! I’m not- What was I supposed to say to get my point across? I’m not leaving this station, and if you know me at all, you’ll respect that decision.”

Garak snorted, “Your decision to throw your whole life away here – and for _what_? What good can you do here in that long that would be more than you could hope for once you were away and clear? A month of work against a lifetime, Doctor. Surely you can see the sense in that.”

Julian glared at him. “Cardassia has enough doctors. The work will be done with or without me. It won’t, here. And do you really think I’d be able to practice, on Cardassia? You think I don’t hear half of what the others say when they don’t think I can hear them? _Oh, how entertaining, what an intriguing novelty, a male trying to practice medicine!_ I’m tolerated here because the Gul brought me on himself. Whether I’m good at it or not almost doesn’t matter – except for the ones who think it’s insulting! On _Cardassia_?” he bit off a derisive bark of laughter. “What is there for me there? Or _anywhere_? There’s hardly enough to keep me going even here!”

“How very uncivilised you make us sound, Doctor! I’ve known men practice medicine on Cardassia Prime, Tain’s own physician-” Garak broke off suddenly. “Besides,” he added, his voice absolutely acid now, “If we’re so barbaric as all that, why come to Bajor in the first place? You couldn’t have missed the Occupation, and for all that…you’ve had little enough trouble learning to blend in here. The next best thing to a Cardassian yourself, State Healer Torran calls you in her reports! And you’ve _certainly_ evinced no objection to my company before.”

“Have you ever considered that I don’t want a _lifetime_ of being ‘the next best thing’?”

“Then what,” Garak asked, his voice flinty, “ _Do_ you want, Doctor?”

Julian swallowed. What did he want? Wanting anything, sometimes, felt like an extravagance. What room did he have in which to want?

“I want,” he said, “To never have to tell another lie so long as I live. I want to be able to practice without being party to something monstrous. I _want_ to be able to say that I have lived as an ethical person, and _none_ of that is something you can offer me.”

Garak froze. Then, quite unexpectedly, he turned his back to Julian and paced away across the room.

“I see.” His voice was wintry. “Well, I’m sorry to have forced my company where it wasn’t appreciated. I’ll go now.”

“Garak-” Julian started, sitting up.

“No, no, Doctor. You’ve made yourself quite clear. I have nothing you want, after all.” Garak’s shoulders shifted, the tension there so much more obvious now. “I won’t trouble you any longer.”

“Garak!”

He was already too late. Garak was out of the door before Julian was even out of bed, and by the time Julian had found his clothes there was no sign of him. It was stupid – it wasn’t as if Julian was going to apologise for not coming with him. Where would they go if he did? Cardassia Prime? One of the colonies? Julian pictured, for a moment, being brought before…Garak must have some family, mustn’t he? Or…no. Julian was an off-worlder, and Garak was an important man on Cardassia, even Julian could tell that. And their arrangement had only ever been a casual one. Soon, the Occupation would be over, and their parts in one another’s lives would end with it. Whatever life Julian had left to look forward to. He couldn’t imagine it stretching much beyond five years, if sentencing was slow. It was almost a relief. Let him be judged, and judged rightly, for all he had done, or hadn’t done, and let that be the end of it. Since the moment his mother’s message had arrived, Julian had thought of almost nothing but the goal ahead of him – get off Earth, get out of Federation space, find a way to stay on Bajor, find a way to make the best of things because if he didn’t he’d go mad. The goals had become shorter and shorter-term the more time went on, and now…one more day, one more life, one more patient was as far as his view of the future had gone in over a year. What a bare, narrow sort of life it was that he was left with, confined to this one station, these same hopeless, fruitless duties. Not much of a life at all, really.

He turned away, closed the door, tugged on the rest of his uniform. No-one would object if he turned up early to his shift, and there was always something that needed to be done. One doctor for every Bajoran on this station, and treating their Cardassian overseers besides – there was never quite enough time for everything that needed doing. Garak and his ridiculous, uncharacteristically ill-considered plans to take Julian away from all of this could be dealt with some other time. He’d slink back to the station sooner or later, Julian knew, and probably they’d carry on as if their argument had never happened. They always had before.

It was a month and a half, in fact, before the Occupation ended, and Julian did not see Garak again.

 


End file.
